The present invention relates to multipoint data delivery systems, and more specifically, to transport mechanisms in a multipoint data delivery system.
As computers become more important for business and entertainment, communication between computer users needs to be improved. One important function of computers is to distribute information to users and allow users to interact and collaborate. Prior art systems for distributing information and interaction include electronic mail (e-mail), mailing lists, making information available through a bulletin board system or a world wide web page, and video conferencing.
Electronic mail permits a user to send out information to a plurality of recipients. However, responses to e-mail are not easily collected. Additionally, multiple parties can not easily collaborate using e-mail.
Mailing lists are useful for distributing information, but it is relatively difficult to tailor what information is received by a subscriber. Additionally, if replies are allowed, the mailing list may become overly cumbersome.
A bulletin board system or world wide web page is useful to publish information. However, generally users can not easily alter the information displayed. Thus, this environment, while allowing publication, does not permit full collaboration between users.
Video conferencing, and similar methods, may be used to collaborate on specific projects. However, video conferencing generally requires a dedicated computer system, which can not be used for something else during the video conference. Furthermore, generally video conference participation is typically limited due to the amount of processing power and network bandwidth required to host each participant. Therefore, the number of participants in such conferences is significantly limited. Thus, it is relatively difficult to have a long term collaboration between multiple users via a video conferencing system.
When collaborations occur between multiple users using computers on different networks, different networking protocols may be present. This generally requires multiple versions of software to be written, one version for each specific protocol. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved mechanism for collaboration which is also independent of the underlying network protocols.
The present invention is a method and apparatus for dynamically loading a transport mechanism in a multipoint data delivery system. A multi-point data delivery system provides a communication mechanism between users or a computer system which permits sending messages point to point, and point to multiple points. A resource locator (RL) corresponding to a collaboration session is requested from a registry. A location indicator of the RL in the registry is received from the registry. In response to receiving the location indicator of the RL in the registry, a transportation mechanism specified in the RL is dynamically loaded, and the collaboration session is joined. The transportation mechanism is a protocol stack identifying the transportation protocol used. The transportation protocols may include transmission control protocol (TCP), user datagrams protocol (UDP), remote method invocation (RMI), T.120, Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Scaleable Reliable Multicast (SRM), and other transportation level implementations.